Citizens United

Jim Hightower ~ The Citizens United Gang

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Nation Of Change | April 18 2012

Barack ObamaThe Lone Ranger was a masked man who was out to bring bad guys to justice. Ed Conard is a masked man who is out to bring bad guys to power.

A multimillionaire financier who was a top henchman in Bain Capital, Mitt Romney’s old outfit of corporate plunderers, Conard is currently riding with the small but fearsome Citizens United Gang, which has taken over presidential politics in our country.

Unlike the James Gang, the Dalton Boys, and other robbers of yore who stole from banks and railroads, these thieves are bankers and high-rolling railroaders. Thanks to the Supreme Court’s edict in the infamous Citizens United case, they are now able to use unlimited amounts of their corporate wealth to create Super PACs, which are proving to be devastating weapons against democracy.

Conard is one of the gang of financial elites who’ve put a million dollars or more into Romney’s super PAC, enabling it to whack his opponents and take the GOP nomination with an unprecedented barrage of venomously negative advertising. Conard is known as a masked robber because he tried to disguise his million-dollar involvement by using the fake name of “W Spann.” Incredibly, that’s not illegal — but it was so glaringly odd that Romney’s campaign had to compel Conard to fess up his real name.

Speaking of names, the Romney Super PAC is called “Restore Our Future.” Whose future does that mean? Not yours and mine, but theirs — the mega-donors’. This was candidly confessed by another member of the Citizens United Gang, hedge fund hustler Ken Griffin. He says he’s in Romney’s super PAC because, “I think (the ultra-wealthy) actually have insufficient influence (in Washington). Those who have enjoyed the benefits of our system (must) protect the system.”

Rarely do you see such altruism on behalf of the selfish few!

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A Clarion Call for Renewal of Democracy

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John Nichols (The Capital Times) | RS_News | March 12 2012

OPINION | Vermonters went to their town meetings last week to settle questions about dump fees, snowplowing contracts and utility meters.

They also decided to take on the corrupt campaign system that is steering the republic toward catastrophe.

And they have done so in a voice loud enough to be heard all the way to Washington.

By Thursday morning, 64 towns had moved to amend the U.S. Constitution to overturn the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling – as well as the false construct that says, in the words of Mitt Romney, “Corporations are people, my friend.”

“The resounding results will send a strong message that corporations and billionaires should not be allowed to buy candidates and elections with unlimited, undisclosed spending on political campaigns,” declared U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.

Vermonters are not the first Americans to move to amend. Referendums have already passed in Madison and Dane County. Cities across the country, including Los Angeles, have urged Congress to begin the amendment process. State legislatures in Hawaii and New Mexico have too. (State Reps. Mark Pocan and Chris Taylor are proposing that Wisconsin join the call.)

But what has happened in Vermont is remarkable. Town meetings endorsed what once seemed a radical response.

It is not just liberals who are saying corporations are not people.

“Support for the resolution cut across party lines. Six towns in Republican districts and 13 cities and towns that have sent both Democrats and Republicans to the state legislature voted for the resolution by wide margins,” says Aquene Freechild of Public Citizen’s Democracy Is for People Campaign. “This bipartisan opposition to the Citizens United ruling mirrors several nationwide polls on the issue.”

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Bill Moyers – Money Throws Democracy Overboard

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Watching what’s happening to our democracy is like watching the cruise ship Costa Concordia founder and sink slowly into the sea off the coast of Italy, as the passengers, shorn of life vests, scramble for safety as best they can, while the captain trips and falls conveniently into a waiting life boat.

We are drowning here, with gaping holes torn into the hull of the ship of state from charges detonated by the owners and manipulators of capital. Their wealth has become a demonic force in politics. Nothing can stop them. Not the law, which has been written to accommodate them. Not scrutiny — they have no shame. Not a decent respect for the welfare of others — the people without means, their safety net shredded, left helpless before events beyond their control.

The obstacles facing the millennial generation didn’t just happen. Take an economy skewed to the top, low wages and missing jobs, predatory interest rates on college loans: these are politically engineered consequences of government of, by, and for the one percent. So, too, is our tax code the product of money and politics, influence and favoritism, lobbyists and the laws they draft for rented politicians to enact.

Here’s what we’re up against. Read it and weep: “America’s Plutocrats Play the Political Ponies.” That’s a headline in “Too Much,” an Internet publication from the Institute for Policy Studies that describes itself as “an online weekly on excess and inequality.”

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Bernie Sanders ~ Stop the Corporate Takeover of Democracy

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Bernie Sanders | RS_News | January 20 2012

Citizens UnitedOPINION | The corporate barbarians are through the gate of American democracy. Not satisfied with their all-pervasive influence on our culture, economy and legislative processes, they want more. They want it all.

Two years ago, the United States supreme court betrayed our Constitution and those who fought to ensure that its protections are enjoyed equally by all persons regardless of religion, race or gender by engaging in an unabashed power-grab on behalf of corporate America. In its now infamous decision in the Citizens United case, five justices declared that corporations must be treated as if they are actual people under the Constitution when it comes to spending money to influence our elections, allowing them for the first time to draw on the corporate checkbook – in any amount and at any time – to run ads explicitly for or against specific candidates.

What’s next … a corporate right to vote?

Don’t laugh. Just this month, the Republican National Committee filed an amicus brief in a US appeals court contending that the natural extension of the Citizens United rationale is that the century-old ban on corporate contributions directly to candidates and political parties is similarly unconstitutional. They want corporations to be able to sponsor candidates and parties directly while claiming with a straight face this would not result in any sort of corruption. And while, this month, they take no issue with corporations being subject to the existing contribution limits, anyone paying attention knows that eliminating such caps will be corporate America’s next prize in its brazen ambition for absolute control over our elections.

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